The Floor Beneath Our Feet

The Floor Beneath Our Feet

About a year ago we made my favourite improvement ever to Necesse, we gave her a floor. And not just any floor, we got Infinity Luxury Woven Vinyl. I’m not name dropping to make anyone jealous, I am just so happy with this product. It had taken us 4 years to find THE flooring that we wanted on our boat. We wanted something that would look good, but that could also hold up to having two children (often with sandy feet) running all over it.

How do we feel about it a year later? We STILL love it. For me, it is that piece that when I step into my boat I say “wow”. It pulls the entire look together and gives it that home-y feel. But it doesn’t only look good, it’s a flooring that packs a ton of hidden benefits. Lets look over the points I had listed about why we chose the flooring in the first place, and see how they have faired over the year:

–Mold and Mildew Resistant: After a year in the humid, tropical weather and we have not had a single issue with mold or mildew. We have not treated the floor with any products, it combats these evil fuzzies all on its own.

–Stain Resistant: The girls have spilt numerous foods and drinks on the floor (especially under the dinner table) and it is no harder than a wipe of a cloth or a quick hand vac and it’s gone. And I mean, gone, no sight of it, no stains.

–Durability: We have not found any wear or tear on the floor, and it has high traffic, given that our girls ACTUALLY run laps (or more like lines) from the front to back of the boat!

–UV Stable/Fade Resistant: This flooring is on the inside of our boat so does not see as much sun as the decking would. So I can write another post a year from now on how our deck flooring is doing. Inside the color is exactly the same as the day we installed it.

–Lightweight: The way we installed it, with the snaps, makes it very easy for us to remove if we want to check under the flooring for any reason. It weighs nothing.

–Foam Backing: I love this feature. The fact that we are no longer walking on hard fiberglass flooring, but rather I can wake up and step out of bed onto cushy flooring is quite heavenly. With the extra padding we also find ourselves sitting on the floor more often, to play games and such, because now it’s comfy.

–Reduces Noise: Ellia’s morning stomps are now reduced to loud walking, which is a step in the right direction!

–The Do-It-Yourself Factor: still nice as we have started attacking adding another style of the Infinity Luxury Woven Vinyl to our deck.

The only cons we have found with this flooring is that glitter (which is the “herpes of art supplies”) likes to get stuck in the weave. But what doesn’t glitter stick to! We try and forbid the stuff on our boat, but someone gifted Ellia a shirt with glitter on it and it is dispersing itself into the floor. I am sure that if I actually took the time to try and remove it, it would come off rather easily…instead I giggle every time I see the floor shine when the glitter catches the sun.

We have also found a few spots where a some extra snaps are needed to keep the flooring from travelling with the high foot traffic. This is mostly in spots where the floor is on an angle (as our girls like to walk on the tops of the angles!). We had kept the snaps pretty far apart to not have too many of them visible, so adding a couple more is no big deal.

Our Sailboat Deck

This type of woven vinyl is mostly seen on power and pontoon boats, but we figured, why not try it on our sailboat, and it is great. Like any boat project they take time, and we are attacking flooring the deck one chunk at a time. This just means that as Eben powers one out we get to enjoy that one area that much more until the next bit getsdone! We chose a lighter color for the deck. We wanted one that would also look good next to the deck paint, as some deck parts, like around our windless, are going to stay visible (we chose to do this because we didn’t want to have to deal with slime that comes off the anchor chain to gunk up the flooring). We also chose a thinner backing for our outdoor flooring than we did with the indoor, simply because we didn’t feel the need to go overboard with outdoor padding. We are very happy with our decisions. The outdoor flooring is cooler to the touch than the deck paint, and is cushier than just the straight boat deck, which means we spend a lot more time sitting out on deck now than we did before.

Installation

He found an even larger space than the first time (since this flooring roll was bigger). He laid the template on top, weighed it down, and cut away.

Since there are so many slits and cutouts on a sailboat deck (for ports, hatches, railings, stanchions, etc) we decided he would not use binding around every edge as that would just be excessive and look extremely busy. So instead Eben made sure to leave 1/2 inch longer around all edges so that he could later glued it to itself (with PVC sheeting glue) on the underside, which create a nice, finished look.

To keep the flooring in place we will use the same Press N Snap tool and snaps as we did with the indoor flooring. This type of flooring can be glued down but we prefer having the flooring being removable. If you decide to use binding on your flooring check out the video in our previous post here for a quick tutorial.

The Verdict

A year later and we still love it. We would still get the same product. This flooring has added value to our boat and a huge amount of comfort to our lives. It has also given us more “hangout” space where we can just lounge on the floor and still be comfy. Who knows, maybe we will install it in our future Eco Home too!

8 Comments

Great info! Thanks for sharing this~ I’ve become so anti floor cover and now am seeing it with new eyes~ it’s amazing what is now available and to be able to see and read first hand how it wears and looks installed is wonderful! I live in So California and I love the color and texture you’ve chosen~ like sand~ definitely going to ck this out for my cottage~
Thanks again!

Glad you found it useful. That is exactly the color/feel we were going for, a natural earth-tone, sandy feel. I always gravitate towards that type of color scheme. Look into them, we truly love the flooring, and good luck with your cottage project.

I don’t know about cats in specific but I did read a blog post about an RV that installed this flooring and they had a small dog that shed a lot and they said it was super easy to vacuum it up with a handheld vacuum.